War Drags On
by sing-oldsongs
Summary: It has been two weeks since Sirius died and Remus is trying not to feel it.  SiriusxRemus.  Onesided RemusxTonks.  FenrirxRemus.  Old HBP reaction fic.
1. one, war drags on

_**Summary**__: It has been two weeks since Sirius died and Remus is trying not to feel it. Sirius/Remus. One-sided Remus/Tonks. Fenrir/Remus._

_**Other Notes**__: my HBP reaction fic from 2005. So, obviously, there are no Deathly Hallows spoilers, but there is a lot of me trying to undo the damage R/T caused to the fannish section of my brain. Warnings for language and dysfunctional (to put it lightly) Fenrir/Remus._

_Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, any of its characters including and especially Remus, Sirius, Dumbledore, Fenrir, Tonks, and Kinglsey, or any of its settings._

**x**

one—war drags on

**x**

The war drags on, sullen and silent, except for those terrible screams that ring on in his nightmares. When he wakes up in the morning he holds his head in his hands and he waits for the shocks and the shaking to cease, and then he splashes the cold water against his face and he puts everything else aside.

**x**

Remus assumes Dumbledore wants to discuss their agreement. Because they did agree: Remus would go off and live with the werewolves, and stop bothering Kingsley while sharing his flat, and stop distracting Tonks while she tries to do her job, and stop beating himself up on the inside where no one can see and everyone can see. And while he's there, he can try to stop those creatures, that race that he can never break free of, and he can counter Fenrir, the growling monster of his dark.

"Remus," Dumbledore says, as they sit opposite each other and the sun streams through the window into the headmaster's office. It is early morning, early summer sun. It has been exactly two weeks since Sirius died, and Remus is trying not to feel it.

"Remus," Dumbledore says, and his voice is soft, and if Remus could still cry he would want to, at that moment. It has been a long time since anyone called him Remus. Only Sirius still remembered a time when people got close enough to him to call him by that given name.

"I've contacted Fenrir," Remus answers. He is speaking very fast, but very clear, and his hands are biting nails against each other. "I thought it best not to show up at their lair and ask them simply to invite me in. They would laugh me back ho—to Hogwarts."

He has no home, not anymore.

Dumbledore ignores the slip. He only nods, and leans forward, and says, "You know that we have no one else to send."

"I know."

"I would ask about the timing of such work, but—"

"I won't hear of it."

Remus has been staring at Dumbledore's desk, but he forces himself to look up once more. "If everyone stopped fighting whenever he felt loss, our effort would fall apart," he continues. "I don't need to rest, Albus. Rest is, in fact, the last thing that I need."

Dumbledore nods again, but it is many moments before he answers. "I have set up a meeting with Harry," is what he finally says. Remus feels himself shutting down: his insides fall apart and his eyes begin to lose focus and his ears hum. These are involuntary reactions, but he has learned a response for each one, a way to control his own body, a way to control himself. He doesn't want to discuss Harry. He owes Harry more now than can be put into words, but he can do nothing to fulfill his debt.

"I need to discuss with him the contents of Sirius's will," Dumbledore says. I need to discuss that document with you, too. You are the only other person mentioned in Sirius's papers."

"I asked him not to leave me anything," Remus says, before he can keep the words from bursting out.

"He mentions as much, in the note." Remus sees, now, that Dumbledore has a collection of papers in front of him—the majority resemble legal documents, but the top piece of parchment is ragged at the edges and covered in informal scrawl. He doesn't comment on the existence of a note, but his eyes shift with curiosity.

"It is addressed to me," Dumbledore says, as he hands that first sheet across the desk and into Remus's barely shaking hands, "but it is clearly meant for you."

_Dear Albus:_

_I would like to thank you for taking care of my estate. The magic linking the house to Harry should hold, as I have been spending my considerable spare time setting up the exchange. However, expect all possibilities, for I am working against extensive and strong blood-magic. I was considering bringing up the subject with him, as a preparation for the possibility of my death, but I know he would hate the topic as much as I would. _

_Everything is straightforward—annotation is largely unnecessary, as I have given everything I own to Harry. I feel it necessary, however, to bring up The Remus Consideration. He has requested that I leave him nothing. I wish to respect his wishes, but he has given me everything in the past year and a half, and I feel it necessary to repay this debt as best I can. You understand. I have decided, then, to leave him what I can unofficially. Enclosed in my estate papers is a memory. I instruct that it be given to him, and if he does not wish to keep it, that it be destroyed. He will know why. I would hope that he would accept one last thing from me._

_Signed Sirius Black_

"A memory?" Remus says, when he has read the letter twice.

Dumbledore hands him a thin, tightly capped vial. Remus is almost afraid to accept it; he worries he will drop it and it will shatter.

"I get the feeling it is of something of great importance to him. Something that he hopes will not die with him."

Remus stares at Dumbledore so long his eyes begin to water. He wants to crush the vial, the memory, the ache of all those years inside his chest, against the pressure of his fist.

"But then, I have not viewed the memory," Dumbledore continues. "It could be anything."

"I don't know what's in it," Remus says, "if you're wondering." He looks down again at the vial cradled in his hand, the sheet of parchment resting on his knees. He feels the hollow carved in his stomach begin to fill up, but whatever is filling him, is drowning him, and he wonders automatically if it is fake or real.

"Sirius never mentioned anything like this."

No one ever mentioned anything like this.

**x**

end part 1/5


	2. two, werewolves live underground

two—werewolves live underground

**x**

The werewolves live underground, in dug out square rooms with shallow beds and dim lights. Their skin is lined and their eyes are dark and they are like the walking dead. Remus tries to talk to the weary ones, but they always shake their head like they've heard it all before. They've heard his words from other mouths and some days, all any of them want to do is die.

**x**

Fenrir Greyback keeps two candles burning at opposite ends of his room. He sleeps on a bed of leaves, with one frayed, ratting, stained pillow at the head. He has two pieces of furniture. One is a desk, made of dark wood and held up by four gnawed, yet sturdy legs; it is covered with maps, parchment, and newspapers. Across from the desk is a short chest of drawers; it has two compartments, the top of which is known to contain Greyback's meager collection of clothes and anything he might have stolen through his journeys. The bottom drawer is largely a mystery. The other werewolves whisper when Greyback isn't around to hear them: they spread rumors of rotting animal bones; of the crushed remains of a small, mutilated, child, ripped apart by their master when he was still young; of Dark weapons so terrible even they would flinch to see. They are tough, hard, creatures, the werewolves, made up of long sinewy muscles and ugly, marring scars, and they spend their lives wallowing in alternating anger and fear. When they speak to each other their voices are low barks. Their eyes are always watching out behind their backs.

They float, also, a slim rumor of Greyback's humanity. They imagine the tattered shreds of a human life in that secret bottom drawer; they say that he is hiding the past with himself underground. They know he has no heart, not any more, but they wonder if he once did, if he misses it, if that is why he keeps (in this rumor-life they start) reminders of his friends and family locked inside his room. They were the people he destroyed. Unlike his other conquests, he never speaks of them.

Remus refuses to listen to these rumors. He keeps his ears open for anything that will help him, but the werewolves whisper about Greyback in scared and suspect tones, and he can tell that they know nothing. They understand only hatred, fear, and bloodlust. He is disgusted by them. He pities them.

"Remus Lupin," Fenrir says, his voice a low drawl of intimidation and mute excitement. "Remus Lupin, I see you have returned."

"You could say that," Remus answers.

Fenrir is the only one in their community with a room of his own. Everyone else sleeps in the main hollow: a large open space that reeks of blood and desperation. Fenrir is the leader, though, and the leader gets a separate space. The leader also gets a door, which he can close whenever he wishes.

Remus's heart is beating thunderbolts against his ribs, and his palms are sweating and he's scared. He doesn't want to be here, he realizes. But he has no other place to go, no choice. He watches Fenrir carefully for signs of an intention. He tries not to feel like he's five again, and there's a strange dog approaching him, and there is something in the air he cannot quite identify, something filled with blood and death.

"I have to say, this pleases me," Fenrir is saying. He is still several steps away from where Remus is standing, too close to the door for bravery. "I always thought you would make a splendid addition to our cause. You have so much _anger_…Remus."

He says the name slow and thick, and he bridges the gap between them and puts one dirty hand against the skin of Remus's jaw.

"Too bad it's all directed back to yourself."

His skin is crawling. He focuses his gaze on Fenrir's eyes, but he is looking inward now. He remembers Harry, at school now, preparing; James, young forever, old before his time; Lily, who gave everything she had and always knew what her fate would ultimately be. He remembers himself, growing up, and the hate that Fenrir spoke of rages up, then falls back down as if freed, finally, from the straining grip of the moon, which spikes it upwards, always.

"What made you come back to us?" Fenrir whispers.

His touch against Remus's jaw is compelling, but Remus swallows back answers of _Sirius_ and _sorrow_ and _grief_, and says, "The war has changed my circumstances. I felt it best to return to the community."

"But…," Fenrir takes his time drawing back his hand, "why _our_ community? Does Dumbledore's Order have no room for the werewolf? Or have you simply experienced a change of ideologies?"

"I will admit that I hold on to many of my old beliefs. Is that a problem?"

He feels slighter braver when Fenrir is leaning slightly away from him.

"Not a problem at all," Fenrir answers. "It won't last long."

Remus is silent. His lungs are struggling for air in the dank, dark underground, and he has started to breathe through his mouth. He hands are twitching without his command. He feels the fear again, but he controls himself.

Fenrir is smiling, sickeningly smiling, and shaking his head. "Oh, I knew even when you were young that you would grow to have that look in your eyes. You are so wonderfully deformed. So…beautiful, really."

Remus can remember Sirius telling him that the scars marring the skin against his ribs were sexy. He can remember laughing. He can remember laughing against Sirius's ear, and feeling that word, that feeling—_deformed_—sliding off him like he never carried it with him, buzzing in his mind, buzzing constantly. He can remember.

He is thinking about Sirius when Fenrir attacks, and sets to bruising his lips with kisses dark, thick, and devouring.

He never kisses back. But he is not of equal strength to pull himself away.

**x**

end part 2/5


	3. three, wind whistles harsh

three—wind whistles harsh

**x**

The wind whistles harsh through the limbs of the trees, all of the leaves fallen in heaps over the ground, and the storefronts empty, watching the deserted streets. This is the village in the early morning, and he can feel that chill setting deeper than his bones, warning him away.

**x**

Remus remembers, three years ago, walking through Hogsmeade on a warm Saturday afternoon, fall but the leaves had barely changed colors, and there were lots of people in sweaters, wearing thin gloves, hurrying past him. He remembers looking at the windows of the stores and staring into Sirius's face as it screamed at him, eyes dark and mad, and wishing that he, Remus, had been the one killed, and not Peter.

He remembers that cowardice now because he's feeling something rather like it again. He's thinking, almost without meaning to, _I wish I had fallen. I wish I had fallen away from this place, instead of him._ His selfishness appalls him. He runs from himself. But he can't really help it because, even after all these years, there are still only two people who can fuck him up this completely, and, just as in all his years before, he is living with one, and being haunted by the other.

Nymphadora Tonks waves him over to the side of the path. She is wearing a long overcoat and a scarf and gloves, though the air is more chilly than frigid. It looks like she hasn't washed her hair in three weeks; it hangs in a stringy brown mess over her eyes.

"I didn't think you'd come," she says. Her eyes seem to add, _This proves you really do care for me,_ and Remus feels guilty.

"Was there anything specific you wanted to discuss?" he asks. He hears his voice and realizes: that is why she is wearing that coat, those gloves, that scarf. It is his tone that brings the chill against her skin.

"You—you know," she says, and pulls her hands from her pockets, and steps closer. "I know that you know. You _have_ to know."

"Know what?"

He wants to fall, he wants to fall, he wants to fall.

"Know how I feel about you."

How can he know how she feels about him, he wants to say, when he doesn't even know how he feels about himself? If anything, he is filled with a horrific and stifling self-contempt, and he wants, in perhaps the last true good deed he will ever manage again, to save her from drowning in all of that hate. It is so course; it does not belong to her, with her bubblegum hair and her drawn-out laugh and the pale, thin, lengths of her fingers that once gripped tall bedposts, as she jumped up and down on the mattresses of her father's house. He remembers when those hands were still small enough to get lost in his, in those years when she was young and he was growing, and when he thinks of the work she does now he is both proud and sad.

"Nymphadora," he says, and waits for her to object. When she doesn't, he smiles, because it is the only thing he knows how to do to replace tears. "Forget anything it is that you want me to tell you, and forget all the words you were planning to use to convince me. I'm old. And I'm sick, and I'm wild. I'm…" he searches for the right way to describe what it is about himself that makes him feel that hatred worst.

_I am in mourning,_ he wants to say, _for a man you will never know._

"I am a werewolf," he says instead, "and werewolves don't get involved with nice girls like you."

**x**

end part 3/5


	4. four, world turns slowly

four—world turns slowly

**x**

The world turns slowly upon its axis now, it seems, following a trudging, circling pace. Its people hate and kill each other, and they turn their lives and their loves and their loyalties into knots. Remus knows these lessons all too well. He knows the part he must play in the big picture, and he clings to it, because the only other thing he has to cling to is the past.

**x**

Kingsley has been very polite in letting Remus stay at his flat on the days—increasingly fewer and fewer—when he dares leave the underground for painful sun. Kingsley is busy now, with his new job in the Muggle government, and often, by the time he returns home, Remus has fallen asleep on the couch with a book in his hands.

One morning, they run into each other and, by silent agreement, eat breakfast sitting at the same table. Kingsley reads the _Prophet_. Remus stares into his coffee, thinking. He is preparing to go back to the lair, though the thought is sickening, and he cannot keep his mind from pacing through Fenrir's small, cramped, dank room. He is spending more time there now, never finding any of the answers that he seeks.

Last night, he had a dream that he was there. He was staring at the list that hangs over Fenrir's desk, the list that he keeps faithfully of all the victims of his werewolf life. There is a name, a date, an age, and a location for each; the handwriting is messy but the ink is of a type too expensive for Remus ever to afford. He found himself on that list in real life once, too—Remus John Lupin; August 16, 1965; 5 years, 5 months, 6 days. In his dream, the names surrounding his were of his family, his friends, his students, his colleagues, and they were all written in dark red blood.

He forced himself to turn away from them, only to face the other wall, and that mysterious drawer that the werewolves base their whispered rumors on. He pulled it open slowly. His hands trembled even in his dream, but he didn't yell or scream or even gasp at the sight of those dark, sunken eyes and that ragged black hair and that rotting, decaying skin. That Marauder grin, those prisoner rags…

He woke up in a cold sweat, his heart beating quick and hard.

"You're getting worse, Lupin."

Kingsley's voice startles him. He looks up and sees the paper folded by the side.

"I don't know what you mean," he answers. His voice is, all in all, holding up well.

"Yes, you do. You're getting thinner and quieter and you're obviously sick. I hate to see that happen to an old friend." Kingsley's voice is rough and demanding, though it is always that way. Remus appreciates the sentiment, but the idea of talking makes him ill.

"I can't quit my job now, it's important—"

"I know." Kingsley's eyes are unblinking. "But I think it's Black's death that's bothering you more."

"I don't want to talk about it," he says quickly, and gets up, a reflex, and walks to put the empty coffee mug in the sink. He stops there, leans forward against the counter edge and thinks how he wants to leave, right then, just find his way out the door and somewhere, anywhere else. But he stops and he stays still because there is nowhere else. This is it.

"It was pretty damn obvious what he was to you." Kingsley has turned in his chair now, and he doesn't seem to notice Remus crumbling from the inside. "We weren't blind."

"Really," Remus says, his own voice flat, tired. He doesn't know any other way to answer.

"It's going to kill you, being like this," Kingsley says. "It's going to flat out kill you and then where will we be? Out one more Order member. Mourning for one more person."

"So what do you expect me to do about it? Forget that he ever existed? I did it before, Shacklebolt, I can do it again, but it doesn't happen overnight."

"That's because you're doing the wrong thing." He comes and stands beside Remus now, his arms crossed and his eyes narrowed. Remus turns to look at him. "Forgetting doesn't help you. It's remembering that keeps you going."

**x**

end part 4/5


	5. five, white snow falls

five—white snow falls

**x**

White snow falls outside the grimy windows of their flat, and he puts one bare hand against the cold glass, watches the small bits of white float through his fingers. He remembers standing outside his parents' house and catching the flakes on his tongue. He remembers building snow forts and throwing snow balls with his friends, in the crisp winter afternoons, in the hours after classes ended. He remembers a lot of things, and they fill him with a warmth all the charms in the world can't recreate.

**x**

Sirius comes to stand with Remus by the window, and at first Remus doesn't even realize that he's there. It is only when he feels the warm, strong pressure of arms around him that he smiles and says "You're back."

"Yeah, I'm back. I missed you."

"Sirius," Remus grins. "You were only gone for an hour."

"I don't care. I'm allowed to miss you as much as I want." He bends his head and kisses against Remus's neck, and Remus can feel Sirius's hair brushing against his skin. He wants to laugh with the sensation of it. "I got us mistletoe," Sirius continues. "We can't possibly celebrate our first Christmas together without mistletoe."

"I don't know. I don't think we need it much, actually," Remus answers, and clasps his hands around Sirius's arms, holding him steady. The snow is falling harder outside, forming small drifts against the windowsill, clouding their view of the street. Remus is beginning to feel like he lives in an isolated world all his own: a world where he can feel Sirius's breath against his skin when he sleeps, a world where they are always smiling. It is such an odd feeling. It is such an oddly good feeling.

"Wait a minute," Sirius says all of a sudden, and takes his arms from where they are draped across Remus's shoulders. "I need to tell you something."

Remus shakes his head, shakes himself out of his reverie, and turns to face Sirius again. "Why the sudden urgency, Padfoot?" he asks. The look in Sirius's face is unnerving him. But Sirius's hands gripping his, still, are warm, and his eyes are bright with mixed fear and excitement.

"I don't know," he says. "I just…I've been meaning to tell you this for a long time. It's really important."

"Well? Don't leave me in suspense here, Padf—"

"I love you. I am hopelessly, hopelessly in love with you, Moony. I wanted you to know that. And I wanted you to know that I would never, ever, lie to you and I would never hurt you."

Remus wants to ask him why he has to say the words, why he has chosen that moment, why he is so forceful with his declaration. But he can't. Sirius is staring at him with pleading eyes. So he wraps his arms around the other man and hugs him as close as he can. "I love you, too, Sirius," he says. "I love you too, very much."

He can feel Sirius burying his face in Remus's shoulder. "You want to know something?" the muffled words come out. "I don't think anyone's ever said that to me before."

Remus can hear noises coming from Sirius, can feel the slight shaking of the body against his. Is Sirius crying? He pulls away just the slightest bit to see, and Sirius looks back at him, his laughter growing louder and louder by the moment. Remus begins to forget all the reasons it isn't funny, and soon, he finds himself laughing too.

**x**

end part 5/5

**x**

_**Final Author's Note**__: Thank you very much to everyone who reviewed. I hope the ending didn't seem like a cheat—this was the story that I wrote to undo HBP in my head, and since that one ended (IMHO, of course) so sadly for Remus, I thought it would be nice to give him a happy ending here—even if it is in the past. So, that's my excuse, I guess. I love angst and then happy endings by whatever means possible._


End file.
